Not so much a general sports blog as an irregularly updated desperate plea for help.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Bald man to appear on Interweb

"Cause you clearly haven't had enough of the Ottawa to MLS talk, join me tomorrow when I appear on the Internet radio program It's Called Football. The program is live at noon eastern and can be listened to at Thatchannel.com.

I will be debating former Globe and Mail blogger Ben Knight on the merits of Ottawa's MLS bid. We will also be talking about Montreal's remarkable ticket sales for next week's CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal, David Beckham, Manchester City's spending and much more.

It's even webcast, so grab the kids and gather around the computer to watch me! I'll try not to swear

"... Ekos president Frank Graves cautioned that some of that support is driven by cynicism sharpened by years of indecision over how to deal with Lansdowne’s deteriorating condition.

" 'A lot of people have trouble believing anything will ever get done to fix what they consider to be an embarrassment,' Mr. Graves said Friday. 'They think we’ve packed our bags for a trip that will never happen.' " (Emphasis mine.)

In other words, you can't say Ottawans want it so much as it's better than nothing.

I'd agree with Starnes on this one. If it's a nice enough stadium, I think MLS would go for sharing with the CFL, especially considering the benefits of being downtown. Moreover, there's a big difference between a CFL/MLS split and an NFL/MLS split; the push for soccer-specific stadiums is largely to avoid MLS teams playing in nearly-empty 80,000 seat arenas, but CFL venues don't have to be that large. A 25,000-30,000 seat stadium downtown could work very nicely for both involved groups, and probably would be enough to get Ottawa a MLS side in 2013.

Does anyone else find it strange that Lansdowne Lame has this question:

"You've talked a lot today about revitalization, but isn't this really about football?

"The football team is only one part of this plan. When we took a look at this location we saw both neglect and tremendous opportunity. This redevelopment will transform Lansdowne into the gathering place it was always meant to be, 12 months a year. It is the centre of our city, equidistant between Orleans, Kanata and Manotick, and our objective is to bring people back to Lansdowne. That's what this is all about."

It's strange they would have that in there if no one asked, but it gives credence to any tinfoil hatters who think this is more about the land than football or soccer, as was pointed out three months ago.

Sorry to be the pedantic math guy, but this poll tells us nothing about whether Ottawans want the MLS or the CFL more: the difference between the "I prefer MLS" (44%) and "I prefer CFL" (43%) respondents is within the margin of error. For all we know, it could be 47-40 one way or 46-41 the other way.

(It does confirm "Lansdowne > Kanata" but you don't need a poll for that.)